THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
79 
PRESENT CONDITIONS . 
Discussed by Frederick W. Kelsey—Advocates Self-Reliance as 
Opposed to Dependence Upon Legislative Acts—Inquiry as 
to Causes of Low Prices—Readjust Market Conditions. 
Editor National Nurseryman : 
The unfavorable reports as to the condition of the nursery 
business, naturally suggest an inquiry as to the causes. Not¬ 
withstanding occasional panics, local disadvantages and the 
present adverse conditions incident to a causeless foreign war, 
the country is growing rapidly in wealth and population, and 
there would seem to be no valid reason other than that of in¬ 
herent condition why the nursery business should not be 
generally as prosperous as the average of other industrial and 
commercial enterprises. 
Mr. Hale’s statement of the case in the May number of the 
Nurseryman may appear extreme or even pessimistic to the 
sanguine ; but there is no question that some of the causes he 
gives for the present demoralization of prices for nursery pro¬ 
ducts are well founded in fact. The policy of sending special 
trade lists made up on the bargain counter principle to every 
possible purchaser even in the smallest quantities, has much 
the same effect in the end as the plan o' offering “ Everything 
for nothing with a chromo thrown in.” Both buyer and seller 
under these methods soon lose all thought of real value and 
the business becomes a scramble, to the ultimate ruin of the 
one and the questionable advantage of the other. It is under 
such conditions that the survival of the fittest principle is 
exemplified and I believe as a general rule those who inaugu¬ 
rate and endeavor to carry out these methods are sooner or 
later, and finally, the greatest sufferers. Several concerns that 
have been trying this plan have reached the limit of necessary 
credit for carrying on business, while more conservative houses 
that have retained correct and substantial methods, find they 
are in condition to take advantage of the present and future 
possibility of the trade. 
The successful men are not those who, Sampson-like of old, 
pull down the whole structural conditions of the business they 
are engaged in, but rather those who hold to reliable principles 
and build up the general conditions concurrent with their 
success. 
Another potent cause for the present unfavorable situation 
is unquestionably the trend of late years to substitute legisla¬ 
tion for self-reliance ; to secure favors and benefits from vested 
authority rather than from individual action. 
The efforts for an excessive or prohibitory tariff and the hue 
and cry over interstate insect legislation, are merely manifes¬ 
tations of this tendency. Every effort to improve existing 
conditions by artificial barriers to the natural laws of trade 
are inevitably disappointing, and doomed to eventual failure. 
The reaction is worse than the action. 
Instead of increasing our own resources by better produc¬ 
tion and improved methods we look to coercive or restrictive 
legislation to exclude outside products, only to find an addi¬ 
tional burden of cost in excessive duties, with now the home 
markets in worse condition than before. 
It must be anything but gratifying to those who favored the 
present duty on fruit stocks now to pay this increased cost 
while the grown products, fruit trees, etc., are selling at lower 
prices than ever before in the history of the country. 
Equally disappointing will be the attempt to eradicate the 
San Jose scale and similar insect pests through interstate quar¬ 
antine regulations. The craze for legislation on this poin 1 
seems to have about run its course, but the unpleasant 
reminders from the action of Germany and Canada in exclud¬ 
ing American fruits and nursery products indicate the extent 
to which harm and injury can result from ill-advised legisla¬ 
tion even where there is not the least perceptible benefit or 
advantage. 
The new tariff law was hardly printed on the statute books 
before the underlying causes creating present conditions were 
going on just as they had been—and will continue, tariff or no 
tariff—until market conditions (quality, supply and demand), 
are re-adjusted on an improved basis. A Chinese wall of 
exclusion against foreign countries or between the states here 
would not, for it could not, prevent an utterly demoralized 
market alike ruinous to all trade interests, wherever the 
methods of the New York nurseiymen described in Mr. Hale’s 
letter prevail. 
The ink is yet fresh on the various scale laws of the differ¬ 
ent states, when it is found that the intended remedy is worse 
than the disease ; that kind nature and self interest are the best 
preventives against insect pest encroachment ; and that the 
attempt to legislate such pests out of existence by quarantine 
restrictions is likely to meet with much the same degree of 
success as would be the effort to legislate the “air above or 
the water beneath.” 
When we in the nursery interests come to recognize the same 
fundamental principles that determine the success of other 
business undertakings— a study of the real conditions of supply 
and demand, the adaptation of resources to these underlying 
causes rather than confidence in artificially created conditions 
—the results will be less varying and on the average to the 
large number engaged in the business, generally more satis¬ 
factory. 
New York, June, 1898. Frederick W. Kelsey. 
AUSTRIA FEARS THE SCALE. 
The state department at Washington, D. C., has a copy of a 
proclamation issued by the Austrian Minister of Agriculture 
of the interior, of finance and commerce, prohibiting the im¬ 
portation from America of live plants, cuttings, seedlings and 
refuse from fresh plants of any kind, also the barrels, boxes 
and all other articles which have been used in the packing of 
such plants or refuse. This action is taken for the purpose of 
preventing the introduction of the San Jose scale from 
America. 
GETS THERE JUST THE SAME. 
Regarding the San Jose scale Meehan s Monthly says : “The 
insect already exists in most places, and, if not, can easily get 
there in a multitude of ways aside from traveling by nursery 
stock. The Colorado potato beetle simply took a ride on a 
railroad train for the East ; and the scale can get across the 
Canadian line on a bird’s foot or feather just as well as on a 
tree, and no doubt can breed just as well on a native forest 
tree as on any tree from a nursery.” 
Canadian journals please copy. 
